Question 1
Evaluate the interpretations in both of the two passages and explain which you think is more convincing as an explanation for the lack of national feeling among the Southern states in the
period between 1867 and 1870.
Passage A
A factor of great importance precluding union of north and south in the foreseeable future was the attitude of southern states towards Prussia. Three of them – Bavaria, Wurttemberg and Baden – were well established states. Though their boundaries and political structures dated only from Napoleonic times, their rulers had successfully consolidated them and enjoyed much popular support. Politically the consultative assemblies had been in advance of anything north of the River Main; in Bavaria tax payers had the vote, while in Baden universal male suffrage with no tax qualification had been obtained since 1848–9. Another contrast between north and south lay in the strength of Catholicism in the southern states. The south was also the heartland of political Catholicism or Ultramontanism. To this nineteenth century phenomenon, Bismarck remained bitterly hostile all his life. Political Catholicism was in essence the response of a Church which felt itself to be under siege because of its refusal to effect a reconciliation with the modern secular state emerging so rapidly in the middle of the century in Western Europe. In the nineteenth century religious divisions between Catholics and Protestants deepened, introducing a new dimension into the political conflicts of the century. And as a Protestant state dominated the new Confederation, southern Catholics were anxious not to join it on religious grounds. Political Catholicism became a significant political force after 1866 precisely because southern opposition to union with the north coincided with Catholic resistance to the attempts of liberal regimes to promote secular education and civil marriage.
Adapted from W. Carr, The Origins of the Wars of German Unification, published 1991.
Passage B
The elections to the Zollparlament in 1868 became a demonstration of the surviving strength of particularism. In Baden the national party had always been strong. In Bavaria and Wurttemberg particularism triumphed. In the latter, particularists won all the seats, in Bavaria 27 against 12 nationalists. The roots of anti-Prussian feeling in the South were diverse. There was fear of the autocratic, military side of Prussianism; in particular of the consequences of the military alliances with the north. They entailed longer periods of military service and higher expenditure which was widely resented. To be taken over by Prussia meant ‘pay taxes, become a soldier and keep your mouth shut’. There was the Catholic suspicion of the Protestant north and the survival of Grossdeutsch as well as particularist sentiment. The social groups disadvantaged by the spread of the market economy, mostly to be found in the Catholic regions, feared the spread of the national market. There were many Prussian Conservatives as well as northern Catholics and opponents of the takeover of Hanover and other states by Prussia, among them the leaders of the Centre Party. Bismarck had to step with extreme caution and his frequent remarks that the completion of German unity was not on his immediate agenda could come as no surprise. It was the general view that in the two years following the Zollparlament elections the prospect of German unity had receded.
Adapted from E. Feuchtwanger, Bismarck, published 2002.
[30]
Answer
